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Increasingly fewer people are actually visiting web sites in a web browser. Theincreased reliance on mobile devices and social media has changed the way we “surf the web.”

In the 1990s, when companies were first dipping their toes into this ocean called the World Wide Web, they built brochure-like web sites that gave contact information and stale descriptions of their products and services. The Internet was little more than a digital yellow pages.

In the late ’90s there were enough web sites online that users started to rely on search engines to find information. The best way to get to the top of those search engines was to have relevant content. That drew visitors, and the more visitors the better.  The more visitors the more you could potentially reach through email newsletters or email contact forms, or possibly even message boards. A metric was born: traffic equals audience. And the more traffic you got, the more email subscribers you got, and the more you got to visit your site frequently the more you may sell your products or services. It was a numbers game.  A webmaster could predict with fairly certain accuracy how much return on investment he’d get based on how many page views, which translated to purchases, etc.

Now, folks aren’t going to traditional web sites as much. Many of the most visited and used web sites are social destinations built around communicating with friends and family in our extended networks of connections. We click and swipe and share information instantly. And let’s face it, web sites are hard to read on cell phones.

So how do business and organizations measure and predict their success on social media networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter? The answer hasn’t changed. It’s a numbers game.

Followers are to Twitter what unique visits is to a web site. If you grow your followers on Twitter (or friends/fans on Facebook), that should eventually (and quite often quickly) translate into a longer online reach.

When you attract followers through social media you’ve earned an audience that’s willing to ENGAGE your brand.  The importance of that relationship cannot be overstated.

From there, it’s not important WHO your followers are, it’s who THEY KNOW and how they can help you deliver or influence those extended followers to be loyal to your products and services.

Twitter is simply a new method of communication, like the telegraph, phone, radio, and television before it. Except it’s even more powerful than those mediums.  Brands that fail to recognize this, especially smaller brands and emerging brands, are missing the point of social media, and risk failure.

Social media is not a time waste.  It’s a platform to engage your customers and would-be customers.  Why wouldn’t you want to engage your customers?

The Twitter doubters, and there are still many, make the mistake of thinking of Twitter as a destination, instead of as a medium to reach consumers. If a brand can carefully carve a presence on Twitter and attract even a few hundred followers, they can effectively disseminate and/or solicit information.

Want examples? @JetBlue is using Twitter to communicate flight information, special fare deals, and travel tips. One of the largest cable television companies, Comcast, is providing customer service on Twitter through @comcastbill, where subscribers can ask questions about their service, billing, installation, etc. Even the NBA’s Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) have embraced the medium, tweeting injury report moments before game time.

If you own a business in a competitive industry and you haven’t started tweeting, you should find out how Twitter can help transform the way you interact with your customers.